Posted on 05/09/2002 7:02:38 AM PDT by ethical
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/69642_guned.shtml
Changing the 2nd Amendment
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
It is disturbing, though not surprising, that the federal government has decided after numerous decades of settled thinking on the Second Amendment to reinterpret its position.
The marked shift, formalized in a pair of footnotes to legal briefs submitted Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court, occurs because of the deeply held beliefs of the man who is now leading the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Last summer, in a letter to the National Rifle Association, Ashcroft foreshadowed the change in official thinking. "Let me state unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protects the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms," he wrote.
The department's departure is profound from philosophical and practical standpoints.
Until now, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Justice Department has been in virtual lockstep with the high court's position on the Second Amendment, as last stated in the 1939 decision, United States v. Miller. In that case the court said the amendment protects only those gun ownership rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well regulated militia."
While legal scholarship on the exceedingly volatile amendment has seesawed between the two disparate views, the courts have been generally unified in their thinking -- adhering to the Miller decision in more than 100 federal and state appellate cases -- until last fall.
Then, in the prosecution of a Texan for violating a 1994 federal gun law, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals departed from precedent to maintain that the amendment protects the individual right to bear arms. It did say those rights could be subject to "limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions."
It should be noted that the department, while announcing its change of heart on the basic thrust of the amendment, does not disagree that gun ownership can be curtailed to some extent. And the department would prefer that the high court not involve itself in the Texas case or its companion on appeal, the case of a man convicted of owning two machine guns in violation of the ban against them.
We disagree. Though couched in a footnote, the pointed challenge to decades of unified thinking by the judiciary -- the perspective that ultimately counts -- has been made.
The time is ripe, as is said in legal parlance, for the high court to weigh in again on the Second Amendment and, it can be hoped, reaffirm the position that the Constitution guarantees only a collective right to guns through state and federal militias, not an individual's absolute right. Otherwise, the door will open wide to weakening the responsible gun laws that protect us all.
Well, as they say in Russia...toughski shitski.
I would love to send this person an altered copy of our Constitution where "people" is replaced with "National Guard."
Reading that altered Constitution does express the basic point of "WE THE PEOPLE..."
Do you think they want to weaken the First Admendment too???
I'm worried that this move by the administration is designed to prevent a clear and final ruling, placating the conservatives temporaily, yet allowing the gbmnt to change "policy" again at its pleasure.
We need a ruling!
My rebuttle to this asinine statement:
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
What part of this is so hard to understand?
No, dear witless sheep of the Seattle Post Intelligencer Editorial Board, the Second Amendment is not being "reinterpreted."
It is being un-interpreted.
The "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well regulated militia" qualifier referred to the parameters of which weapons were protected by the Second Amendment. The protection itself was clearly understood to pertain to individual possession and ownership.
The court was simply addressing what is now known as the "nukes and nerve gas" straw man.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
What do they not understand? We, the citizens of America are the militia and it is our duty to secure our free state.
Sorry, but color codes or security checks at the airport does not make it.
Changing Dred Scott
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
Wednesday, September 20, 1863 --
It is disturbing, though not surprising, that the federal government has decided after numerous decades of settled thinking on the propriety of slavery to reinterpret its position...
Starts with a lie and then adds several others throughout this piece of trash.
It might also interest idiot liberals to consider that each and every time the words "the people" is used in the other articles of the Bill of Rights, it is used to describe an individual right.
Now, why would the Founders, notoriously meticulous and careful writers, mean something different when they wrote "the people" in the Second Amendment?
And that's not even to discuss the wealth of evidence in the records of the debates and the Founders other writings to support the "individual right" position.
And besides, since when does the left give a shit about textual interpretation of the constitution? Watching them contort themselves around a few phrases in a lame attempt to make their case is almost painful and embarrasing, since we know they couldn't care less about the written consitution, supporting, as they do, such abominations as Roe v. Wade which bears no resemblance to the written constitution.
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